Business software? AMD was much better there and because of integrated memory controller, difference is indeed much bigger than benchmarks say. You are saying Intel was "better" at content creation because of single DivX software. As I provided link, you can see there is much wrong with DivX (3200+ result is flawed) so that can be safely ignored. Not to mention Intel's power consumption was so huge that AMD could just raise clocks a little and left Intel more behind. AMD didn't need to do that.
Also for content creation generally, it made use of multiple CPU's at that time. So those who did content creation used multiple CPU configurations. On dual CPU (or quad CPU) configurations AMD was even more ahead because of non-shared bus of Hyper Transport.
So basically AMD was best on everything except few Intel optimized software and some cases that were rarely used (like media encoding on single CPU).
You really need to read the review mate, or any review of the Athlon64. It wasn’t just divX that Intel were stronger at, a lot of other applications were better on Intel at the time. The Athlon64 did dominate because they were faster overall and faster for gaming and yes I’m sure had better power efficiency (although I would check, you are incredibly biased towards AMD and not trustworthy at all). You are factually incorrect if you believe that AMD dominated everything, this is easy to find out. You clearly weren’t into this stuff during that time as you are clearly quite mis informed on the subject. Of course I hugely preferred AMD back then as I’m a gamer and I prefer chips that cost a bit more but perform better. This was the Athlon64, it was expensive (so were Intel). The AthlonXP before it were the good value parts. I owned both a Pentium 4 and an Athlon64 and I massively preferred the Athlon64 for my needs. I miss that AMD, even if the prices were sky high.
I will point out, if Zen 2 comes out and offers a significant IPC advantage over Intel and can clock as high as Intel chips I fully believe they will charge more than Intel are charging, it’s how this industry works. Mostly because people like me will be prepared to pay it. Or best case scenario they will cost the same as Intel and Intel will cut their prices and AMD won’t. I wouldn’t mind that arrangement, we haven’t seen a decent improvement in IPC for years, I’d love to see one, I don’t care if it’s from AMD or Intel, whoever does it gets my money at this point.
Read through the benchmarks on this review, there are quite a few that Pentium were faster at;
https://techreport.com/review/5683/amd-athlon-64-processor/13
To quote the article;
“For those of us with more pedestrian spending limits, the Athlon 64 3200+ looks like a great value. Yes, it costs over 400 bucks, but the stock Pentium 4 3.2GHz is selling for more than $600 right now. The Athlon 64 3200+ maybe trails the P4 3.2GHz in overall performance by the thinnest of margins, but no way is the P4 worth another $150 to $200. And that's without considering the 64-bit question.”.
When AMD released its more powerful Athlon 64 parts they ranked up their prices and Intel cut theirs leading to the value crown going to Intel at least for non gamers. Quote from an Athlon64 4000 review;
“In fact, once you take price into account, the Pentium 4s start looking quite a bit more attractive than they might otherwise. Throw out the P4 Extreme Edition; the Prescott-based P4 560 is often faster than the Extreme Edition, and the 560 lists for only $417. The 560 is also much cheaper than the Athlon 64 3800+, currently priced at $643. AMD may be beating Intel in performance, but the value proposition isn't there until you work your way down to the 3500+. Even among mid-range processors, outside of gaming performance, the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 offerings are generally competitive, as the WorldBench scores testify. The P4 550 3.4GHz outscores the Athlon 64 3500+, and the P4 540 at 3.2GHz edges out the Athlon 64 3200+. So Intel may be down, but it's not completely out of contention, especially for non-gamers.”.
I had the Athlon64 3500+ which replaced my P4 3.0 from the previous Prescott generation and was quite significantly better at gaming but not so at productivity. It also cost more.
